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Daily Scripture

+ 5th Week in Ordinary Time

It still has meaning.

1 Kings 8:1-7, 9-13 Psalm 132:6-7, 8-10 Mark 6:53-56

The priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place beneath the wings of the cherubim in the sanctuary, the holy of holies of the temple. There was nothing in the ark but the two stone tablets which Moses had put there at Horeb, when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel. [1 Kings 8:6, 8]
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In recent years there has been much discussion in liturgical circles about the proper location of the tabernacle in the worship space. The directives implementing the Constitution on the Liturgy by the Second Vatican Council prescribed that the tabernacle be located in prominent location in the church or chapel, preferably in a chapel dedicated to the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament and appropriate for veneration. In any case, it was not to be located on the altar table used for the celebration of the Eucharist. As a result in many churches renovations, the tabernacle was moved to the ‘side altar’ previously used for the veneration of the Blessed Virgin or St. Joseph and in some churches, it was placed on the old altar previously used for Mass. In situations the old altar was replaced with a permanent pedestal on which the tabernacle was placed.

In liturgical matters, nothing is simple. Those of a more conservative disposition insisted that the location of the Tabernacle on the side altar reduced the status of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist thereby diminishing its meaning in the devotional life of the faithful. Others of a more liberal persuasion opined that in fact, the location in a separate chapel within the church assigned to the sacrament greater prominence thereby increasing the devotional aspect. Moreover, in as much as an emphasis of the ‘action’ of the Mass as the repetition of the “Lord’s Supper” was promoted by the Council, it seemed to liturgists that the location of the tabernacle in the main sanctuary behind the free standing Eucharist table would compete with the ‘action’ of the Mass as a sacred meal.

The most recent prescriptions in the United States provide that the tabernacle be located in the main sanctuary on suitably ornate pedestal. It is ironic that in the major basilicas including the basilica of St. Peter in Rome, the tabernacle is located on a side altar that is not very prominent.

Whatever the location, it should not be a bone of contention worthy of a liturgical battle. The public and private devotion to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is rooted in the long tradition of the Church and should not be disparaged. In the same way in which the tablets of stone on which the Ten Commandments was symbolic of God’s presence in the temple, so too, the reservation of the Eucharist Bread has been one of the longest-standing practices of the devotional life of Catholics. It is intended to extend the meaning and the effects of the Eucharistic celebration into the life of the faithful who continue to spend time in prayerful meditation on the mysteries of the life of Jesus not the least of which is his faithfulness unto death on the cross for the salvation of the world. The two aspects of Eucharist need not be in competition. The ‘Mass’ continues to be considered a “sacrificial” meal. But we need to be clear that its connection with the passion and death of Christ even as the lamb of God is not to suggest that his death was mandated to satisfy and angry God. That in my opinion is not an appropriate application of Old Testament sacrifices. No, Jesus sacrificial death was the completion of his entire sacrificial life of unqualified and indiscriminate love in the same way as the sacrificial love of partners in marriage offer their sacrificial love to one another or in the manner that Mother Teresa offered her live in sacrificial service to victims of poverty in the streets of Calctta. It is in this sense that devotion to the Eucharist in the tabernacle takes its extended meaning.

During the celebration of the Eucharist, we become what we eat. Through our devotion to the Eucharist reserved in the tabernacle, we are reminded that the Eucharistic presence in our mind, heart and soul extends into all the good works of our lives with the hope that we too will always think and act with the same sacrificial love as did Jesus in his earthly life.

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 'B'

Sunday October 4, 2009

It’s all about the human heart

Were my grandmother here this morning, having reared seven children, she might caution me, “Anyone who knows as little as you do about marriage would do well to stay out of the pulpit!”

Notwithstanding the temptation for the preacher to call in sick, this is one of those occasions on which the homilist is tempted to dilute the meaning of the text with well-meaning exegesis or on the other to get bogged down in a ‘catch-22’ moralistic diatribe.

There is something more going on in this exchange. For one thing, the Pharisees were playing games with Jesus. One commentator referred to them as “gotcha games “. They were attempting to discredit Jesus before his listeners. There were two schools of thought, each claiming to have the truth on their side. If Jesus took one side, he would lose the other. It was a no win situation.

Instead, “Jesus turns it all upside down, as he so frequently did. It’s not really about legalities of divorce all; it’s about the human heart.”

The Dali Lama said: “We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of other’s actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from other’s activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with one another.” (Dali Lama of Tibet as quoted in Preaching Resources, CELEBRATION: A Comprehensive Resource, Celebration Publicatioins.org.2009)

People who are truly in love do not marry with the intention of splitting up but divorce happens when something as precious as love withers and dies. It’s a symbol of brokenness, failure and pain in which we all share when love loses its energy. Genesis gives us a very different picture of Adam as he cries out, “At last I have a companion who is my equal, made as I am. Of my very own flesh and bone.”

My friend and mentor, Fr. George Wilson summed it up in these words: “He is tapping into one of the deepest desires in the heart of every human being, of you and of me. We long for intimacy with someone who is a peer, a partner, a companion on our life journey; someone with whom we can share ourselves fully, safely and without fear; someone we can face eye to eye; where there is no higher and lower, no superior and inferior – whether that supposed superiority is based on gender (male is superior) or race (white is better) or clerical status (priesthood is higher) or class (rich controls poor) or national pride (America will never a partner, it stands above all the other nations). We are drawn by the dream of a world where no one of us is the caretaker of another. We long to be able to be transparent and know that we are fully accepted.” (George Wilson, SJ, St. Agnes, Cincinnati, 2006)

Thomas Merton was a man in search of pure love that he discovered through his many conversions could be found only in his total surrender to God and in the love of humanity. One is not possible without the other. On one of his visits to Louisville for a doctor’s appointment, as he stood on the corner of 4th and Walnut Streets gazing at the busy shoppers and passersby, of a sudden he was overwhelmed with the reality of God’s presence in all those people and that somehow he felt a solidarity with all of them. It was a moment all too brief but it transformed his monastic vocation as one that could not separate him from the world but which connected him with the good of all humanity.

But that vision didn’t last and he continued for the rest of his life to wrestle with the demands of love knowing that, in the words of St. Augustine, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts will not rest until they rest in you.”

Marital love is one form of intimacy that is a paradigm for the love that God has for all humanity in Christ. Monastic life is another. “Faithfulness is more than filling a legal commitment. It’s all about the heart. It is possible to fulfill all the legal requirements of marriage and never be physically unfaithful and still miss the point, as is possible in all our relationships, with each and with God. We are all partners with God in the continuing work of creation. It’s all about being a peer, being equal and not making the other an object or a plaything; of knowing the other as flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, looking eye to eye.” (Ibid.)

Robert Fulgham tells the story about a touching experience he had with his daughter. “It was Molly’s job to hand her father his brown paper lunch bag each morning before he headed off to work. One morning, in addition to his usual lunch bag, Molly handed him a second paper bag. This one was worn and held together with duct tape, staples, and paper clips.

“Why two bags?” Fulghum asked.

“This one is something else,” Molly answered.

“What’s in it?”

“Oh, Just some stuff. Take it with you.”

At lumch time as he ate his lunch, he tore open Mollys bag and shook out the contents: two hair ribbons, three small stones, a plastic dinosaur, a pencil stub, a tiny sea shell, two animal crackers, a marble, a used chap-stick a small doll, to chocolate kisses and thirteen pennies.

Fulghum finished his lunch and empted everything into the waste basked.

On his return home, Molly asked him, “Where is my bag?”

“What bag?”

“You know the one I gave you this morning?”

“I left it at work. Why?”

“I forgot to put this note in it. And besides, those are my things in the sack, Daddy, the ones I really like – I thought you might like to play with them but now I want them back. You didn’t lose the bag, did you?”

Molly had given him her treasures — all that a seven year old held dear. Love in a paper sack, and he missed it. Back to the office he went.

After supper he asked Molly to tell him about the stuff in the bag. Everything had a story or a memory or was attached to dreams and imaginary friends. He himself had given her the chocolate kisses and she kept them for when she needed them.

Oh, on the note she had forgotten to place in the bag was written, “I love you daddy.”

Fulghum concludes the story: “Sometimes I think of all the times in this sweet life, when I must have missed the affection I was being given. A friend of mine calls this – “standing knee deep in the river and dying of thirst.”